Cobblecrest Chronicles

  Vaurak's Reckoning The dust of the road tasted of ash. It was a fine, gritty powder that clung to the back of the throat and painted the horizon in a perpetual, mournful grey. For three days, the haze had hung over Cobblecrest valley, a silent testament to the trouble brewing in the distant hamlet of Duskfield. Inside the Shrine of the Harvest Moon, the air was still and heavy with the scent of wilting prayer-bouquets and beeswax. The morning sun, a wan and watery disc in the smoky sky, cast feeble patterns through the stained-glass depictions of Chauntea, the Earthmother. Four figures, a fellowship of necessity rather than design, stood in the relative cool of the nave, their silence a stark contrast to the worried murmurs of the smock-clad farmers kneeling in the pews. Zara Al-Jamil, her dark curls escaping a simple leather cord, ran a finger over the scorched edge of a hymn-scroll left on a reading stand. A scholar from the sun-drenched south, she found the frontier’s blend of...

  The Trickster’s Deception The last of the honey mead clung to the bottom of Baelen’s mug, a sweet, sticky memory of a song just ended. Here in the Rusty Cauldron, warmth was a currency as valuable as coin. It radiated from the great stone hearth, from the press of bodies, from the hearty laughter of Tobias Grumblefoot, the halfling proprietor who seemed to be in three places at once. Baelen Rockseeker, son of Thrain, of the Maerthwatch clan, allowed himself a rare, shallow breath of contentment. The air, thick with the scent of rosemary, applewood, and damp wool, was a far cry from the clean, cold stone and metallic tang of the forges he called home, but it had its own kind of strength. A community’s strength. Across the table, Anya Meadowbrook’s nimble fingers were a blur, weaving a loose thread on her worn leather cuff into an intricate cat’s cradle. Her eyes, sharp and dark, missed nothing: the way the bard favored his left leg, the slight tremble in the serving girl’s hand, t...